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Family Dates Sign

I made these for my mother and grandmother for mother's day. I originally saw something similar on Pinterest and since I use my craft time as time to do my own thing I don't do instructions for crafts all that often and didn't save it. However, they turned out really well and I'm pretty excited about them.

Things you will need

Wooden Circles(1-1/2 x 3/16 in)-enough for each person or event you plan to include

Wooden rectangles(1 3/8 x 1 3/4 x 3/16 in)(12)

Various colors of acrylic paint

Paint Brush

Sharpie Paint Pen

Large Wooden Sign

Thin wooden letters

Fabric

Mod Podge

Eyelet hooks

Round Jump Rings 12mm(can be found in jewelry sections of craft stores)

List of dates

Wood glue

Razor blade

Drill

I started by drilling 1/16th holes into the top and bottom of each circle and rectangle making sure they were directly opposite each other.

Once all the circles were drilled, I divided the circles into families and assigned each a color. I tried to use colors which complimented each other. I used deep colors for my mother's and pastel colors for my grandmother's.

Once the paint on the circles dried, I used the Sharpie Paint Pen to write the name and the date on each circle. I used only the number of the date, because each circle will hang under its respected month and with the month and date the circle looks crowded.

After the paint of the names dried, I organized the circles into their respected months and then put them away for later.

The sign is where I feel you can be the most creative. For the sign shown, I painted it gray and used wooden letters to form Family. I painted the sides of each wooden letter too so it would blend in with the background. The letters were the most difficult part of the project. I found the easiest thing to do was to put Mod Podge down on the letter and cut out a square of fabric which would cover the entire letter.

After letting the Mod Podge dry for about twenty minutes, I used a razor blade to cut off the excess fabric. You have to be careful though, the razor blade is sharp enough to cut the wood as well. After cutting off the excess, I covered the fabric in another layer of Mod Podge to seal it. Finally, I arranged all the letters on the sign so they would fit and glued on each letter one at a time with wood glue.

On the one I did for my grandmother, I Mod Podged Fabric onto the wood and painted the wooden letters instead. Both turned out really well.

After finishing the sign I started on the month squares. Originally I was going to just going to pick a color to paint all the months but decided to decorate each month based off what is known for and they turned out really well.

The final step is to put everything together. I spaced out the 12 eyelet hooks and attached each rectangle to an eyelet hook with a round jump ring and used the round jump rings to attach each of the circles in order by date.

To hang your project there are a couple of options. You can simple add frame hooks to the back or I used ribbon for hanging. I started by putting two eyelet hooks on top of the sign and ran ribbon through the eyelet hooks on each side and tied the ribbon together making a bow at the top. I also added ribbon bows onto the eyelet hooks to hide them.

62 comments:

Your projects turned out great, but it was very difficult to read the entire post. Your links on the right hand side make it impossible to scroll down the page. Maybe you could consider moving them? I adore this project but don't want to fight with your webpage to complete it.

To be honest I'm not really sure how to move them. I'll continue to work on figuring it out, but I have switched the view of the blog so hopefully that will make it easier to stroll once you pick a post

I love this idea...and I am expanding on it. I am using the same principal, but making a family tree...each of the top squares will be the head of the family, then their spouse adds on, then each child and their children and so on! If I remember when I finish it (have to make eight of them) I will try to post it. But this is really amazing and the calendar WILL be made for myself when I am done! Thanks for so many great prjects!

Hey Katie! I did hand paint the months. Most of the lettering I used vinyl lettering...but also did that by hand. I found the fonts i liked that corresponded with the month theme, then imported the font into word, then typed the month and picked the size I wanted...then I put a removable sticker on my screen, and traced the word. then i put the removable sticker on a piece of vinyl (used for die cut machines like a cricut) then cut out each letter. THEN I put the lettered on transfer paper. and THEN rubbed the letters onto the finished month wood piece. THAT was a LOT of work! But i do love how it turned out. Ill be done tonight, so Ill post a final pic then. :-)

You are very talented! I am extremely impressed. Do you have a blog? I'd love to post a picture of your finished project linked to your blog of course with your permission. Other people creating things from ideas they get off my blog was always my biggest goal!

Aw Thanks Katie!! I do not have a blog. :-( BUT you are more than welcome to use any pics of mine. I'm not a copyright freak. I crochet mostly, and have a fan page on facebook, but no blog. if you want to post it yourself on your blog, Id be more than happy to explain any part of the process I used.

I followed you here from Pinterest! This is such a cute idea! I wish I had that many family members to make one of these. I need to think on how to make one for my very small family. You are very creative!

You can see the one I made for my sister here http://acraftyescape-katie.blogspot.com/2012/08/updates-and-such.html hers only has about 20 on it and it still looks great. If you family is smaller maybe a smaller plaque and hanging them by family and putting their full birthday on there? Good luck!

I love this idea but since you have the ages of everyone printed you would have to make new circles every year. Instead maybe print the name with the year they were born and that way you can always figure out how old they are without changing circles :) very cute project

I love this idea and I'm going to go ahead and do my own take on it for each of the members of my family. Unfortunately that means I need to make at least 4 (if I leave my own family out). Should be a fun project to try to get done by next month.

I made one similar to yours for my Mother who is also a Grandmother and Great Grandmother. I used circles for the birthdays, put the day they were born, their first and middle name and the year they were born. I also included anniversaries using hearts using first names and he year they were married. I also chose a separate color for each family, for the great grandchildren I used pink for girl and blue for boy. The hearts I painted in red or pink.

I wanted to thank everyone here for great ideas. I was able to make two versions of these for my mother and sister. They came out great! I stenciled the dates using a pencil and outlined them with a black paint pen. It's a mix between what Katie and Monica have done. I used a Family Tree charm pack from Moda to do the letters and wrote the names on the back of the dates .

I made one of these as a wedding present and the couple loved it.Did his family in one color hers in another [blue and green I think] and them the third color [red I believe]. It's been over a year since I made it! I also listed anniversaries. Birthdays were circles, anniversaries were hearts. I only put name and date but on the back I listed the year. Then I found a picture frame that was rectangular and hung the months from the bottom. In the frame I put a Bible verse - can't remember what it was right now.

I loved your idea and made a board as a gift to my mom. She treasures it as a beautiful wall hanging and relies on it monthly to remember birthdays. She has 27 grandchildren! I decided to modge podge family photos as a background collage on my board.